ARTIST STATEMENT
My recent project, Tight Body, uses frame weaving, minimalism and the grid to examine living, creating, and caregiving with chronic pain. Since early 2022, I have been grappling with Long COVID and learning to manage the accompanying pain and fatigue. I am also grappling with my invisible disability in my artwork. By weaving fine, white threads around and through repurposed painting stretcher bars, I mean to convey the tension and attention that it takes to manage my condition at all times. The white, woven cloth that is suspended between the stretchers represents an abstraction of flesh, joints, and muscles. The overall works disappear into the wall, both to draw the viewer into their intimacy, and to represent the fading away of a person who suffers from a chronic illness. The works float against the wall, casting a shadow that changes with the light. Creating these weavings by literally sewing cloth from string, represents the process that I am undergoing, sewing myself back together while making the invisible visible. Through this artwork, I am processing my invisible condition by creating invisible bodies, making the internal external, and raising awareness.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Wendy Saam is an artist and mother working in Altamont, New York. She creates intimate woven abstractions dealing with the body and the invisibility of chronic pain. A graduate of Pratt Institute in both art history and library science, the process and procedure of her artwork is what drives her creations. Drawing on the modernist tradition of the grid, Wendy references artists like Agnes Martin and Hilma af Klint in her compositions. She also maintains a fascination with architectural schematic drawings, quilt patterns, and maps. Wendy finds inspiration from the artists she works with daily as a development researcher at Chautauqua Institution. When not weaving or drawing, Wendy enjoys reading, tap dancing, and knitting.
© Wendy E. Saam